The reaction to Jake Lloyd’s illness has made me so angry. Seriously. For every supportive article, there’s a clusterfuck of cruel, mocking, ableist comments (this small sample is not even the worst of them) and I am also mentally ill and I am sad and I am furious.
Does the problem lie with nerd culture? Does the problem lie with Star Wars fans? (Bit of overlap between those two, I know.) Does the problem lie with society in the general, and its innate ableism? God knows. But I am incredibly disillusioned with Star Wars fandom, I really am.
(You can donate to Star Wars Fans for Jake Lloyd here, if you wish. Also, help us flood the Internet with support for him? God knows, he could use it.)
jake lloyd
You may have heard that Jake Lloyd, the young actor who played Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode I, was recently moved to a psychiatric facility to receive treatment for his schizophrenia. However, this was only after spending 10 months in jail, which is sadly the same fate that meets many mentally ill people all over the globe.
So here’s the plan: how about rallying behind him and using Star Wars fandom for some good? Right now we’re raising money for the charity Basic Needs, which serves people with mental illnesses all over the world, including the US.
Founded in 2000, BasicNeeds is a mental health focused international NGO with a global reach spanning 12 countries and growing.
Our mission is to enable people with mental illness or epilepsy and their families to live and work successfully in their communities by combining health, socio-economic and community orientated solutions with changes in policy, practice and resource allocation.
Our vision is that the basic needs of all people living with mental illness and epilepsy throughout the world are met and their basic rights are recognised and respected. [x]
This fundraiser is not affiliated with Jake Lloyd, his family, or Disney/Lucasfilm – this is a fan project only.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE, and please boost this if you can.
I am very pleased to report that we had a single donation of $75 today! Meaning we’ve achieved 3% of our goal!
You may have heard that Jake Lloyd, the young actor who played Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars Episode I, was recently moved to a psychiatric facility to receive treatment for his schizophrenia. However, this was only after spending 10 months in jail, which is sadly the same fate that meets many mentally ill people all over the globe.
So here’s the plan: how about rallying behind him and using Star Wars fandom for some good? Right now we’re raising money for the charity Basic Needs, which serves people with mental illnesses all over the world, including the US.
Founded in 2000, BasicNeeds is a mental health focused international NGO with a global reach spanning 12 countries and growing.
Our mission is to enable people with mental illness or epilepsy and their families to live and work successfully in their communities by combining health, socio-economic and community orientated solutions with changes in policy, practice and resource allocation.
Our vision is that the basic needs of all people living with mental illness and epilepsy throughout the world are met and their basic rights are recognised and respected. [x]
This fundraiser is not affiliated with Jake Lloyd, his family, or Disney/Lucasfilm – this is a fan project only.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE, and please boost this if you can.
Giving this some more thought –
– I think perhaps the best option is to do some fundraising for a mental health charity (I’ve been looking around to see which one would be best) in Jake’s name. I thought ForceForChange would be a good place to start, but it seems you can only contribute to four select charities there, so I’m very very open to other ideas.
If Jake ends up seeing it, that’s really great! (Ideally it would go viral, I suppose, but you can’t really make something go viral.) If not, then a charity gets a nice amount of money to help people with and we can all sit back in the knowledge that we did something to counteract the really shitty, usually hugely ableist things that people have been saying since the news story about him broke.
Also, today I Tweeted Mark Hamill, which was pretty nerveracking to say the least.
Mainblogging this as well.
Jake Lloyd, Mental Illness, and Laying Off on the Bullying
I feel so bad for him. Being mentally ill and then having to deal with the shitty Star Wars fandoms cruelty towards him. I wish him all the best.
I’ve set up Do Something Nice For Jake Lloyd as a response to all that shittiness. If you’re interested, do come and have a look – I figure the two most appropriate responses would be either a) a card for him or b) a fundraiser for mental health services (or both) but people are throwing ideas around, so any help/more ideas are very much welcome.
Fuck it, I want to do something nice for Jake Lloyd. Like – really, seriously, I want to do something nice for him.
From one mentally ill person to another, I suppose.
Lots of people have drawn fanart of young Anakin, lots of people I know liked his performance – maybe we could get together as a group and send him something? A fanzine, a video, a card even, just – something. Something that might help.
I don’t know how I’d get in touch with him, mind. He’s got a Facebook page, but it hasn’t been updated in over a year. But assuming I/we could – would anyone be interested? Would anyone want to contribute fanart or other cool stuff? Please, please let me know. If enough people are interested I’ll set up a subtumblr so people can bounce around ideas, so please reblog this, if you can!
Liam seemed born to play the role of Qui Gon Jinn. He’s very quiet, he’s very big, he’s very powerful, but he’s very contemplative. And Ewan is very witty and enthusiastic and young and impatient. Those things come through. Natalie is very intelligent, has a lot of presence and is a very strong person. At the same time, she’s very young. I needed somebody to play a 14-year old girl who basically could be elected to rule a planet and make that believable. Jake was this wild little Tom Sawyer kid, which was exactly what I was searching for in the young Anakin Skywalker.
George Lucas on casting for The Phantom Menace
Probably my favorite thing about the Star Wars resurgence is the sudden love and defense of Hayden Christensen
It’s like we all looked around and realized the nerdy fuckboys who hated him in the early 2000s are gone and we can love him in peace and there’s just so much Hayden appreciation rn I hope he knows how much we love him
He seems like a really nice guy, he didn’t deserve that.
(Let’s turn our attention to Jake Lloyd next, who really, really did not deserve that at NINE YEARS OLD.)
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